Entry Note To Self...the edge

Journal Entry: 12/11/18

The Ecology of the Mind...where the sky meets the sea

On my morning walk I noticed the beauty of the the sea meeting the shore. The ecotone, that defined space where two habitats merge. That threshold where water meets the shore, where the forest comes to meadow, or where woodland ends at a cultivated lawn. It is the edge habitat where everything — soil content, vegetation, moisture, humidity, light, pollination — changes. It’s also where species from both sides converge, rendering it a place of complex interaction and diversity. The edge...

Things are always happening there. The small sea birds as they scramble from the edge of the waves, poking their beaks in the sand looking for that bite size crustacean. The Osprey as they break the edge of the water then towers to the sky with their next meal. Life just seems to happen on the edge.

It is a place of constant change and unexpected appearances. Such a distinction can be helpful when you are trying to distill a nebulous idea into a handful of words, or just in reflecting on a memory from our past. It is nothing more than noticing that space where broken sea shells become the sandy shore... just a glance is enough to remind us of the intensity and yet simple complexity in these places of transition, where one thing manages to become another. Edge walking with our mind and bodies.

We are all edge walkers when you really think about it. Always looking at the edge for our inspiration, our thrill our transition. Looking outward at the horizon or inward trying to discern the edge of our soul. That edge between depression and happiness, between control and freedom. The edge between love and hate, compassion and resentment. Life happens on the edge and we all are just edge walkers between life and death...make your distinctions well my friends...Doc

From Inside The Sane Asylum...Give me a break

From Inside The Sane Asylum...give me a break

Every language has its own collection of wise sayings. They offer advice about how to live and also transfer some underlying ideas, principles and values of a given culture / society. These sayings are called "idioms" - or proverbs if they are longer. These combinations of words have (rarely complete sentences) a "figurative meaning" meaning, they basically work with "pictures". Like "birds of a feather flock together."

I don't want to pull any wool over your eyes, but to make a long story short and  please take this with a grain of sand, since it comes from the horses mouth and not hearing this through the grape vine. At times I don't play with a full deck of cards. Off my rocker you could say. There are times I go barking up the wrong tree and at the drop of a hat will beat around the bush. I don't think I have ever cried over spilled milk, but I am guilty of adding insult to injury and I have been known to put all my eggs in one basket...

Enough of this bull shit, I need a break before I taste a dose of my own medicine. I don't want to ever be caught dead...what a visual that is...be back soon...your guess is good as mine. Just experienced a blooming idiom...Doc

Entry Note To Self...goodness perhaps?

Journal Entry: 12/11/18
Let me say this about Goodness.

It may be that in goodness we may see, not a reason for life nor an explanation of it, but an extenuation. In this indifferent universe, with its inevitable evils that surround us from the cradle to the grave, it may serve, not as a challenge or a reply, but as an affirmation of our own independence. It is the retort that humour makes to the tragic absurdity of fate.

Unlike beauty, it can be perfect without being tedious, and, greater than love, time does not wither its delight. But goodness is shown in right action and who can tell in this meaningless world what right action is? It is not action that aims at happiness; it is a happy chance if happiness results.

Plato, as I best understand it, enjoined upon the wise men of his day, to abandon the serene life of contemplation for the turmoil of practical affairs and thereby set the claim of duty above the desire for happiness; and all of us, I suppose, on occasion we all have adopted a certain course because we thought it right even though we well knew that it may never bring us happiness, neither then nor in the future.

What then is right action? For my own part the best answer I know is that one given by Fray Luis de Leon. ”To follow it does not look so difficult that human weakness quails before it as beyond its strength. With it I can end my book.” The beauty of life, he says, is nothing but this, that each should act in conformity with his nature and his business.

As I ponder it today, it seems that way to me...Doc